MISCHA JAKUPCAK is a filmmaker, artist, and writer dedicated to championing original, authentic stories across film, television, and virtual reality. Born and raised in Missoula, she holds a BA in Creative Writing and Philosophy from the University of Arizona and an MA in Filmmaking from the London Film School.
Mischa has produced acclaimed features including East of the Mountains, Potato Dreams of America, The Off Hours, Eagle Bone, and Little Potato. As a writer-director, her short films include Accidents + Emergencies, The Hero Pose, Kill Cash Cow Kill, Eating Ugly Children, and Slow Moving Houses.
A passionate advocate for storytelling in all its forms, she has contributed to over thirty feature films and nine VR projects, while actively engaging communities to promote creative activism through the arts and emerging technologies. Her work has screened at major festivals including Sundance, SXSW, TIFF, TIFF Kids, the Festival du Cinéma Américain de Deauville, SIFF, AFI, and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim.
Her feature directorial debut, The Mermaid Ward, will be completed this year. An autobiographical documentary, The Mermaid Ward traces the events leading up to a psychotic episode Mischa experienced years ago. It culminated in a spiritual emergency where she believed all the world to be a film set and herself cast as the lead actor. Mischa was admitted to the Mermaid Ward, a psychiatric hospital in Hackney. There, armed with smuggled disposable cameras, she slowly reconstructed her fractured reality one photograph at a time.
jakupcak@gmail.com